The purpose of the present study was to document the errors secondary school students emit in decoding and spelling. Participants were 55 students, diagnosed as having LD using State-identification criteria. The decoding tasks involved reading aloud an equal number of words and pseudowords (N=25 each) which were presented interchangeably and in order of ascending difficulty. Students’ errors were coded as addition, substitution, omission, reversal (separately for phonemes and syllables) and stress ones. Spelling was evaluated by writing 76 words (read by the examiner as part of a sentence). The errors were coded as phonological, historical, morphological, and stress ones. Results indicated that (a) the most frequent decoding errors involved phoneme and syllable substitution and stress errors, and (b) the most to least frequent spelling errors involved stress, morphological type errors, historical spelling, and spelling errors of phonological type. When regressing spelling on decoding, the linear combination of the latter explained variance levels between 13% and 31%. It is concluded that spelling has a strong decoding basis and that those errors seem to persist in adolescence. Thus, at the secondary school level, teachers need to evaluate and monitor the basic/prerequisite skills of reading and spelling.

Reading and spelling difficulties represent the major problem among students with specific Learning Disabilities throughout their school and adult life (Kotoulas & Padeliadu, 2000; Siegel, 2003). Although reading difficulties include decoding, fluency and comprehension problems, decoding of long, multisyllabic words may differentiate qualitatively poor and good readers. It appears that even when students have acquired the basic decoding skills, such as knowledge of graphophonemic correspondence and knowledge of sight vocabulary, they still face significant decoding problems when attempting to read unknown, multisyllabic words, like the ones included in secondary education books (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003). Furthermore, spelling problems are often comorbid to reading problems while in secondary education spelling is considered highly significant.

Based on the viable assumption that early identification and treatment of reading disabilities may prevent later learning problems, most of the relevant research and intervention studies have focused on the early and/middle elementary school grades. In addition reading demands in secondary education increase while at the same time systematic reading instruction decreases, since it is considered completed by the end of elementary education. Therefore, students who face significant reading problems may be set for failure since they are called to meet higher demands with less relevant instruction (Irvin, Buehl, & Klemp, 2003).

Given that decoding, as part of reading, is literally ignored by teachers at the secondary school level, and is less researched, the present study targeted at: (a) documenting the decoding and spelling problems in secondary students with LD (both quantitatively and qualitatively), and (b) predicting spelling problems from decoding.

 

Students who participated in the study (n=50) were formally diagnosed as having Learning Disabilities and attended middle school. Students were asked to respond to two decoding and one spelling tasks. The decoding tasks involved reading aloud an equal number of words and pseudowords (N=25 each) which were presented interchangeably and in order of ascending difficulty. Students’ errors were coded as addition, substitution, omission, reversal (separately for phonemes and syllables) and stress ones. The students’ spelling competence was evaluated by writing 76 words (words were read by the examiner as part of a sentence). The errors were coded as phonological, historical, morphological, and stress ones.

 

Errors in decoding and spelling were placed into distinct qualitatively categories (e.g., stress for spelling and substitutions for decoding). Subsequently, those frequencies were quantified in order to allow comparisons between categories. Simple and multiple linear regressions evaluated the contribution of decoding to spelling achievement.

Decoding. Based on the analysis of the data, it was documented that students made a large number of decoding errors both in reading words and pseudowords (almost double in pseudowords) while stress errors were predominant in all cases. The difference between students’ errors in pseudo and real words was statistically significant [t(50) = 10.13, p < .001]. Furthermore, it was revealed that the mean errors made by each student, were 20/25 for pseudowords and 8/25 for words, indicating that these students faced significant limitations in their basic decoding skills. In regard to the specific nature of the documented errors, these involved mostly substitution, omission and addition of phonemes.

Spelling. With regard to their spelling profile, students were found to emit more stress and morphological type errors (33% and 32% respectively), fewer on historical spelling (25%) and even less of the phonological type (10%). The linear combination of decoding predicted 20% of the variance in spelling of the phonological type with word decoding emerging as a significant predictor (b = .308). Spelling of the historical type was predicted by decoding (R² = 31%) and again, only the decoding of words emerged as a significant predictor (b = .495). Spelling of the morphological type was predicted by decoding (R² = 22%) but contrary to the above, this time the decoding of pseudowords emerged as a significant predictor (b = .390). Stress spelling was not predicted by decoding.

In conclusion, the decoding task error analysis supports the idea that (a) decoding errors are very prominent at the secondary level, and (b) the decoding ability of secondary students is strongly related to their spelling competence.

 Theoretical and educational significance of research

It is common in education, to observe a pendulum move when implementing instructional interventions. The area of remedial reading education is no exception. There has been a move from an exclusive focus on basic skills instruction, to a total reversion, towards, an exclusive focus on strategies instruction. These changes from one extreme to the other, especially when they are not supported by research and do not take into consideration the school environment and demands may lead to lack of appropriate support for students with reading disabilities. Based on the above findings, it was documented that decoding mistakes represent a major difficulty for all students with LD in secondary school, while spelling mistakes appear to concentrate on stress and the morphological type. Therefore, future remedial programs will need to incorporate basic skills instruction into their curriculum.

 

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